Mar 26, 2015 New research reveals the relationship between luck and skill in winning. Is poker a game of chance or skill? Formulating equations rooted in the myriad complexities of Texas Hold ‘Em.
When’s the last time you heard something about luck at the
Texas holdem table?
The odds are the last time you played you heard someone talk
about luck. If you’re honest you probably either talked about
luck or at least thought about it the last time you played.
Here’s a list of common things about luck heard around the
Texas holdem table:
- That sure was a lucky break.
- Talk about bad luck. She hit a four outer on the river to beat me.
- I just need to hit a lucky streak to get back to even.
- I’m the unluckiest poker player in the world.
- It’s lucky you hit your flush because I had the straight.
If you believe luck has anything to do with the results at
the Texas holdem table it’s time you learned the truth.
The truth is luck has nothing to do with anything that
happens at the Texas holdem table.
It doesn’t matter what you think or what you’ve heard or
seen, everything that happens is a matter of mathematical
probabilities and short term variance. Once you finish this page
you’ll realize this is true and you’ll learn how to use this
information against your opponents.
The best thing about learning the truth about luck and poker
is it instantly makes you a better player. When you understand
why luck has nothing to do with your results and how short term
variance works you’ll start looking at everything that happens
while you’re playing in a different way.
Once you learn about Texas holdem luck and variance you can
see how they’re directly related to odds, pot odds, and expected
value. If you haven’t read the pages covering those topics in
this section yet make sure to check them out after reading this
page.
How Short Term Variance Works
The reason luck doesn’t have anything to do with Texas holdem
is because you’re using a deck of playing cards within a strict
framework of rules. The deck of cards has a set number of cards,
52, and only a certain number of outcomes are possible in any
situation.
Before the river is dealt you have two pair and your opponent
has a gut shot straight draw. When your opponent gets one of the
four cards she needs to complete her straight it seems like good
luck for her and bad luck for you.
Let’s look at every possible outcome for this hand to see if
luck has anything to do with it.
The board has four cards, your opponent has two cards, and
you have two cards, for a total of eight known cards. This
leaves a total of 44 unseen cards. Four of the cards complete a
straight for your opponent and 40 of them don’t. So every 44
times you’re in this situation you’ll win 40 and lose four.
While the percentages or odds are in your favor, the more
times you’re in this situation the closer the results will come
to the correct percentages.
For example, if you’re in this situation 1,000 times you’ll
win roughly 909 times and lose roughly 91 times.
The important number to consider is you have to lose roughly
one out of every 11 times you’re in this situation. It has
nothing to do with luck and everything to do with simple
mathematics.
You should actually rejoice when your opponent draws out on
you in this situation because the average must come back to
normal eventually and you’ve just put one on the negative side.
This means in the long run you’re one closer to the dominating
numbers this situation requires.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll automatically win
the next 10 times if you just lost a hand in this situation.
While over the long term the averages always work out, the short
term isn’t guaranteed. You’re not even guaranteed to win the
next identical situation.
It’s possible to lose two, three, or even more hands in a row
in this situation, even as a huge favorite. It’s not likely to
happen, but it can.
over and over, the numbers take care of themselves and force
profit to you.
This outcome shows why what really happens is normal and if a
result presents itself that isn’t favored to happen it’s simply
short term variance.
In this example we assumed you knew the values of your hole
cards as well as your opponents because of the way we set up the
hand. In most hands you won’t know the exact value of your
opponent’s cards but often you can generate a good guess. This
doesn’t change the lesson, simply the number of seen and unseen
cards.
Here are a couple more examples. The example we just covered
showed a hand where you were a huge favorite. Many players make
the mistake of thinking they’re a bigger favorite than they
actually are in some hands. The next example covers one of these
situations.
If you have a made hand after the turn and your opponent has
four to a flush, you’re a favorite to win the hand. But do you
know how many times you’ll win and lose on average? How big of a
favorite do you think you are?
You know the value of eight cards, leaving 44 unseen cards.
The deck has nine cards that complete your opponent’s flush, so
35 cards make you the winner. Your opponent will hit their flush
over 20% of the time. This means slightly over one out of every
five times you’re in this situation you lose.
This still makes you a big favorite, but you aren’t so big of
a favorite that you should expect to win on any single hand.
What if your opponent has an open end straight draw and a
flush draw? This means she has 15 outs out of 44 unseen cards.
This means she’ll win roughly 34% of the time, or 34 out of
every 100 times you play the situation.
value, luck doesn’t come into play.
If you have a suited ace and king and your opponent has a
pair of fives, the pair of fives will win just under 52% of the
time heads up and the suited ace king will win 48% of the time.
You’ll actually tie a very small percentage of the time, which
is covered in the slightly fewer than 52% of the time the pocket
fives win. For ease of calculation we’re using 52% and 48%.
When you play this situation 100 times the pocket fives hand
wins 52 times and the suite ace king wins 48 times. This is
close to a coin flip so you shouldn’t be surprised at either
outcome, no matter which side of the hand you’re on.
How Understanding Variance Helps with Tilt
It’s easy to get upset when an opponent does something stupid
but wins anyway or when you trick your opponent and have a
dominant hand only to get drawn out on. But now that you
understand it doesn’t have anything to do with luck you can use
this information to avoid tilt.
When you go on tilt you start making plays based on your
emotions, usually anger, instead of on sound playing decisions.
Any time you make a play at the Texas holdem table that isn’t
based on the decision that makes the most money in the long run
you’re costing yourself long term profit. Tilt clearly falls
into the category of playing decisions that aren’t based on the
correct decisions for long term profit.
The next time you lose in a situation where you’re
the heavy favorite remember what you learned in the last
section. Simply understanding how the math works can be enough
to help you remain calm and approach the next hand with a level
head and clear thinking.
You can also consider commenting about how lucky your
opponent was to try to get them to buy into how everything is
based on luck. You can learn more about this in the next
section.
Saying the Word Luck at the Table
As long as you never start believing that luck has anything
to do with the results at the Texas holdem table you should
spread the word around as much as possible.
You want as many of your opponents as possible to believe in
luck and keep striving to turn their luck around. If your
opponents believe everything that happens is based on luck
they’ll never learn how to improve their game. This helps you
win more in the long run.
Developing your skills and abilities to become a winning
Texas holdem player has a great deal to do with psychology. When
you fall into the trap of thinking that luck plays a role you
not only cost yourself money by basing your playing decisions on
luck and feelings instead of math, percentages, and odds, you
also run the risk of damaging the psychological way you play and
view the game.
table instead of recognizing short term variance when you see it,
you stop making the correct plays.
You’re making an excuse for poor play instead of taking
responsibility for your mistakes and striving to correct them
and increase your profits.
If you can help other players fall into the believing in luck
trap you can help them damage their poker psychology. This in
turn helps you in the long run.
Don’t be afraid to tell everyone at the table how lucky you
are when you win a hand or get a nice starting hand. Everyone
gets dealt a pair of pocket aces or kings the same percentage of
times in the long run, but it can seem lucky when you get them.
Some players can get irritated if you comment on how lucky
they are on a hand, so you have to decide if you want to run the
risk of irritating your opponents when they win a hand. Some
players don’t have a problem being confrontational, but if you
do you might want to avoid starting the luck conversation. But
if one of your opponents mentions it feel free to jump in.
Pros Do It Too
You don’t even have to be an amateur poker player to fall
into the luck trap. Recently a televised poker game was on with
Mike Matusow. He was in a hand as a favorite and was considering
making an offer to run the hand twice but didn’t.
He ended up losing the hand and started whining about how no
one knew how bad he ran at poker. This is another way of saying
he always has bad luck. And he’s been a pro long enough to know
better.
If you’re not familiar with running a hand twice, in big cash
games sometimes the players agree to run a situation twice. If
they get all in pre flop with an ace and a king against a pair
of sevens they could run it twice, dealing the flop, turn, and
river and then dealing it again.
It’s a way to average out situations when playing for high
stakes. The only place you generally see it is at the highest
level tables.
Summary
Now that you know the difference between luck and short term
variance at the Texas holdem poker tables you can start using
what you’ve learned. The next time you’re on the short end of
the variance stick quietly rejoice because you’ve got one of the
losing draws out of the way. It always brings you one step
closer to winning in the long run.
Now you never need to worry about going on tilt again. Since
there’s no such thing as a bad beat you can stop getting upset
at the poker table. Just keep getting your money in when you’re
the favorite and let the math take care of everything else.
It’s BAFFLING to us that in today’s age of information we still have to help settle the argument on whether or not poker is a game of chance or a game of skill. Why are we baffled? Well, we figured that with such easy access to information, statistics, theory and results, people would be able to come to an informed and correct decisions on this matter.
Sadly, this is not the case. Before we go any further, here’s the spoiler. Poker is a game of skill with a luck element. The skill element outweighs the luck factor. This means that unlike games of chance, poker can be beaten over the long run. You can play poker for a living. You cannot play roulette for a living. This is because poker is a game of skill and roulette is an example of a game of chance.
To take this a step further, we want to point out that this is not an opinion piece. This piece is laying out the facts of the situation. This is not “what we think” or “what we want to be true.” This is what IS true and is backed up by theory, statistics and our good ole’ pal sound logic.
We hear people time and time again arguing that poker is all luck and no skill. They’ll argue this until their blue in the face and usually without a lot of sound reasoning as to why they feel that way. We guess that they feel this way for a few reasons. First, it could stem from a lack of understanding. If you don’t understand every aspect of the game of poker, it’s probably easy to lump it into a category with other games of chance. We get it. Casinos house games of chance…poker is often played in a casino. You’re not dumb for incorrectly drawing this conclusion.
The second reason people might stick to the wrong side of this debate is that they are jealous or have some sort of ego issue. They feel that if they aren’t capable of doing something for a living or beating something in the long run, then no one is probably capable of it. This is a close-minded and arrogant attitude that needs to be checked if they have any hope of seeing things as they are.
If this debate strikes a chord with you, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to address the debate, share information and hopefully put a close to this chapter of the book. You may be reading this for one of a few reasons. You may be here because you sternly believe that poker is a game of chance. You may be here because you are new and unsure of what to believe. You may be here because you are trying to figure out how to explain to friends and family that poker is a game of skill. You may even be here because someone sent you this link to read!
Whoever you are and wherever you are from, welcome. We’re not here to judge anyone or make anyone feel stupid for questioning things. The only way you learn is to let your ego down, ask the tough questions and get to the bottom of things. If you’re still stubborn after presented with all of the information, then that is, unfortunately, going to be something you have to deal with on your own.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for this article, let’s start digging into this debate. Buckle up because it’s going to be a fun and bumpy ride!
Defining Luck and Skill
An important first step in settling this debate is defining some of the more important terms that we will be discussing.
- Luck – success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one’s own actions.
- Skill – the ability to do something well; expertise.
- Game of Chance – an activity, especially one in which you gamble money, that depends on luck instead of skill.
- Game of Skill – A game of skill is a game where the outcome is determined mainly by mental or physical skill, rather than by chance.
The argument that most people make is that poker is a game that only utilizes luck. They claim that there is no skill involved. These two claims make up our third definition. They are claiming that you are playing a game where the outcome depends on luck and not on skill.
So, what do we need to prove to show that poker is a game that can be beaten long-term and can effectively be played for a living? We need to prove that poker uses skill. A step further, though, is that we need to prove that the skill element of poker outshines and supersedes any luck or chance component that game might have. We need to prove that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. Let’s get to work!
Luck and Skill Can Coexist
The biggest issue that a lot of people have when approaching this debate is that they want everything to be black and white. They believe that poker is either a game that uses skill OR it’s a game that uses luck. They fail to acknowledge that a game can have both a luck and a skill component. This is important to our argument.
Luck and skill can coexist within games of chance and within games of skill. For example, the game of craps is one that most people would agree is a game of chance. Most people would agree that no matter what you do, the casino is always going to have a statistical edge in the game. The few that disagree do not understand. Again, this is not a matter of opinion. It is a mathematical fact that the casino will ALWAYS have an edge when it comes to playing craps.
But is there skill involved as well? Yes, actually. There are things that you can do to limit the house edge and give yourself a better opportunity to win in the short run. In the long run, you’re still going to lose to the casino, but you can certainly utilize some strategies to better your chances and lower that house edge. The problem here, though, is that the skill is not significant enough to overcome the luck factor. There are no strategies that can defy math.
On the flip side, there are games of skill that have a luck element involved. Let’s look at a non-poker example first. Are you familiar with investing? We’re referring to people who buy stocks and bonds to help grow their money. Most people would agree that this involves a lot of skill. There is a reason that the big brokers on Wall Street get paid the big bucks. They have a lot of skill and training that allows them to stay a step ahead of the markets and turn a profit for you and for themselves.
Let’s say a Wall Street broker purchases stock in a big oil company. They use their skill and expertise to identify that the company is in an emerging market and stands to have a huge year. All skill so far, right? Well, let’s also say that two weeks into Q1 there is a massive hurricane that destroys a huge percentage of that company’s oil wells. The company takes a massive hit, and the broker loses big on the trade. All skill or lack of skill still? Nope. This is luck. The broker got unlucky that the hurricane stepped in and ruined what was going to be a genius trade.
This broker may have lost on this trade in the short term, but that does not mean they’re going to lose in the long run. You’re not going to say that this broker has no skill and is playing a game of chance. The broker’s skill and expertise should help them to get past the short-term variance and persevere on their other trades and their overall bottom line. This is an example of something skill-based (though it’s not a game per say) where luck still plays a role. However, the skill factor supersedes the luck factor in the long-run picture. The broker may lose in the short-run, but they will be able to use their skill and win in the long-run.
Skill in Poker
This conveniently leads us to our connection with poker. We’ve shown that luck and skill can coexist, which means identifying the presence of either is not enough to prove a game of chance or a game of skill. We’ve found that what we need to prove is that the skill factor in poker is great enough to overcome any sort of luck factor in the long run.
While we definitely can’t go into every bit of poker strategy, we can talk about quite a bit that should be enough for you to begin to see the light. In poker, all strategy is aimed at extracting as much money from your opponents when you have the best hand and losing the least amount of money when you have the worst hand. In other words, it’s about getting as much money into the middle when you have the best hand and putting in as little money as possible when you are behind.
Imagine this scenario. We offer you the ability to bet on the flip of a coin. Now, you know that the coin flips 50% heads and 50% tails. Is this bet appealing to you? Well, unless you’re someone who loves to gamble, probably not. This bet is completely luck-based and requires no skill at all. But let’s say we change the game a little bit. We bring out a special coin that lands on heads 60% of the time and tails only 40%. Now this bet looks WAY more appealing. You’ll be tripping over yourself to bet on this as much as possible.
You can safely say now that selecting heads is a smarter move. You’re technically using your knowledge base to make a betting decision that’s going to turn you a profit. But are you going to win on the first toss? Maybe…maybe not. While you still have a statistical advantage, you may still lose in the short term. Heck, you could lose 5 or 10 tosses in a row. Are you going to stop making the bet? You’d only stop if you were crazy. You know that in the long run, you are going to turn a massive profit if you keep pushing the small edge that you have.
Texas Holdem Poker Luck Or Skill
Imagine that we then told you that you had to bet heads five times and tails five times, but we’d allow you to change your bet size to whatever you wanted. You’d bet the absolute minimum every time you had to bet tails, and you’d bet the max every time you were able to bet tails.
This is A LOT like what poker is and what poker strategy tries to do. You use your skill and expertise to identify small edges where you are a statistical favorite to win the hand. When you stumble on these situations, you use more skill and strategy to try and get as much money into the pot as possible. When you identify situations where you are not a statistical favorite, you use skill and strategy to avoid putting in as much money as possible. Effectively, you are maximizing your profits when you have the best hand and minimizing your losses when you have the worst hand.
Much like our coin example, this does not mean that you are going to win every single hand. Even though you are making statistically favorable conditions, you might find yourself falling victim to short-term variance. This will happen. But, as in our coin example, if you keep pushing your edges, you will eventually realize that edge and turn a nice profit.
So, how do poker players do this? Well, they use a whole host of strategies to try and identify what their opponent has and how their hand compares to that. The more they can identify the range of hands their opponent has, the more they can figure out how much they can extract when they have a better hand and when to get away when they have the worst hand.
People that believe poker is all luck don’t realize how much thought goes into a particular hand from a winning player. Players are analyzing game conditions, history of how each other player has played, pot conditions, bet sizes, potential hand ranges, tells and reads and any other piece of information they can get. They take all of this and mix it with their personal strategy of what cards to play, bet sizing, position, their opponent’s perception of them and more in order to decide what the highest expected value move is to make.
Are they always right? Of course not, but if they’re right more often than they are wrong, they can easily be a long-term winning player.
The best advice we can give is to read hand histories from winning players or listen to YouTube video breakdowns of what all goes through a player’s mind during a hand. You’ll quickly see that a professional or winning player is doing a lot more calculating and observing than you are giving them credit for. For example, here’s a sample hand one of our staff members played recently that will walk you through some of their thought processes in a hand.
“I was playing deep in a $565 multi-table no-limit hold’em tournament when this hand happened. We area about 15 people away from the money and I had about 65 big blinds. I opened with JJ to 2.5x and the button 3-bet me to 10x total (4x my bet). The button was an older player who had been playing extremely tight all day. They also keep checking the tournament clock to see how many players are left so clearly making the money was important to them.
I had played with this player a bunch and started to realize that he only 3-bet with premium hands. It was always AK+ or JJ+. I also started to notice that with AK or JJ they 3-bet a lot larger (usually in the 4x range) and with their super premiums (QQ, KK, and AA) they would 3-bet slightly smaller to try and invite action.
While I don’t ever like to put players on such tight ranges, I felt like it was pretty clear that I could in this situation. He only 3-bets with the top of his range, we’re on the bubble that he cares about so clearly his range is even tighter, and his sizing was the bigger sizing. It seems pretty clear that this guy is holding AK or JJ. Because I was holding JJ, I felt like it was way less likely that he had JJ. I felt like this guy was literally trying to tell me he had AK. Again, I never aim to put players on such narrow of ranges, but in this situation, it seemed so clear.
I elected just to call as I knew if I raised at all he would shove, and we would be flipping for our stacks. The flop came out Q-7-4. I checked, and he fired out a big bet. Sticking with my initial read, I called. The turn was another Q, and I checked again. This time the guy went all in. I thought about it for a few seconds and decided I was sticking to my read. I noticed he looked super nervous as well and like he wasn’t excited about the situation.
I called, and the old guy sighed and flipped over AK. He had six outs going into the river for about a 12% chance of winning. The river was a 3, and we scooped a monster pot.”
This is just a sample of what goes through a professional player’s mind during a hand. The player in this story was able to use historical evidence from prior hands, situational evidence and some strategy to navigate the hand and get their money in as an 88% favorite. Could they have still lost on the river? Yes, but if they’re able to get their money in the middle as such a big favorite every time, they’re going to win in the long run.
This hand was a very surface-level look into a winning player’s mind. The strategy goes much deeper, especially when you start getting into the math and range calculations. This should be enough to show you, though, that a thinking player is able to manipulate the situation in order to give them the best chance of winning. The player could have put all of their money in pre-flop, where they would have been just over a 50% favorite. They elected not to, though, and ultimately were able to get their money in as an 88% favorite.
If an ace or a king had come on the flop, our staff member could have easily folded and lost only about 15% of their stack. Other players might have put it all in pre-flop and then complained of bad luck if they lost the coin flip. This is a perfect example of how skill can help you to navigate a hand and get more money in the middle when you have the best of it and avoid losing when you are behind.
Anecdotal Evidence
At this point, we’re hoping that it’s pretty clear to you that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. While there is a short-term luck factor, skill will help to prevail in the long run. If you still need some more convincing, let’s take a look at some anecdotal evidence.
Why are the same players at the final tables of so many events? Why are some players able to play poker solely as their source of income for years? If you answer that they are the luckiest people in the world, you may want to take a minute and reexamine your judgment. The reason these players are able to make money and stay crushing the game continually is that the game is not a game of chance.
How many professional roulette players do you know? How many professional craps players do you know? The answer is most certainly a big zero. If anyone tells you anything differently, they better be the richest person in the world because they’re telling you that they can effectively print money.
Take a minute and look at how many poker players have been playing the game as their sole source of income for years. This by itself should be sufficient evidence that poker is a sustainable game of skill that can be beaten long term.
How Does the Casino Allow This?
A big question that a lot of people ask during this debate is how the casino allows this to happen. The old cliché phrase that “Vegas wasn’t built on winners” is true. Casinos don’t take bets that they know they can’t win. Every bet that the casino takes, they have a statistical advantage (besides the pass line in craps which is 50/50). So, how do they allow poker into the casino if it is actually beatable?
The answer is that when you are playing poker, you are not betting against the casino. When you play roulette, you are betting against the casino. When you play craps, you are betting against the casino. When you play poker, though, you are betting against other players. The casino is only taking a small fee for facilitating the game. This is known as the house rake.
Think about it this way. If the casino was able to make money off of betting against you, they would. Since they can’t though, they take a small cut of the pots to facilitate the action. The casino is completely content with this for several reasons. One, as usual, they can’t lose with this model. Two, poker serves as a way to get people in the door. Poker players are notoriously big fans of sports betting and gambling, which are two huge money makers for the casino.
So, that’s a long way of saying the casino does not mind because they are happily making money with absolutely no risk.
The “Pro”-blem and Why People Refuse to Believe
Hopefully, by now you’ve seen the light and agree that poker is a game of skill that can be beaten long term. Before we close out the article, though, we want to talk about a few of the reasons that it can be challenging for people to see the light. This may help any of you holdouts that are still sitting on the fence. It may also help some of you who have seen the light to understand why some people are just that stubborn.
Texas Holdem Vegas World
The biggest issue happens to be with the recent growth of “pro” poker players. Why did we put that in quotes? Well, we are referring to the people that have been playing for a few months and claim to be professionals because they’ve won a few tournaments. Inevitably, most of these people are just on a heater and quickly burn through their bankrolls before they have to go back to regular jobs.
Texas Holdem Vegas Poker Free
What does this do for our cause? It ruins it. People see people that are claiming to play poker for a living failing miserably. It’s no wonder they think that it’s not possible when they see so many people failing. What we’re begging you to see here is that not everyone that calls themselves a professional poker player is a professional or anywhere close to good enough to be a long-term winning player.
Want proof? Watch the World Series of Poker Main Event from a few years back. Most people’s professions were listed as regular jobs. Fast-forward a few years…literally. Everyone and their brother has their profession listed as professional poker player. It is not humanly possible for there to be that many pros. We can also say that watching some of these “pros” play is pretty close to embarrassing.
Make sure if you are looking for proof of our point that you are looking at people that are actually winning players and not just people masquerading as winning players.
The Final Verdict
The verdict should be clear now. Poker is a game of skill that has a small luck element. The skill element far outweighs the luck element, and because of this, the game can be profitable long-term. We’ve walked you through a small bit of the strategy that winning players use to get themselves their desired edge, but this is certainly not all of the strategies they use. The game goes much deeper, and the ability to push statistical edges gets even stronger. Hopefully, this small taste is enough to prove our point.
Now, does this mean that anyone who plays is going to win in the long run? Is everyone that believes in this going to start winning? It definitely does not. This is not like Santa Clause. Just because you believe that it’s a beatable skill game does not mean that you’re instantly going to beat it. Do you instantly become a great basketball player just because you believe it’s a game of skill? We won’t answer that one for you. All it means is that with the right set of skills, discipline and volume, you can beat poker and make consistent money playing it.
If you’re still stubborn and refuse to believe that the game can be beaten, we’re sad to hear that. We hope that one day you’re able to see things for what they really are. If not, though, maybe poker isn’t the game for you. Leave the free money from the fish to us!